BLOG POST OF THE WEEK

Oh, the Irony

What’s Ben & Jerry’s been up to while consumers have been working hard to get Ben & Jerry’s off store shelves?

It’s been furiously spinning the brand’s “good guys” story in the media.

First, there was the public relations stunt calling on Facebook to clean up its “online swamp” or parent company, Unilever—with its $8.3-billion advertising budget—would stop advertising on the platform.

Ben & Jerry’s also recently made a big media splash about the brand’s support for the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber’s new Poor People's Campaign, calling for “a moral, economic, and political revolution and revitalization of American society.”

Ben & Jerry’s pledged a portion of the sales from its new “One Sweet World” brand to Rev. Barber’s campaign.

Again, the irony. Here’s a brand whose suppliers are on the verge of bankruptcy, talking about justice for the poor.

ACTION ALERT

Dumped!

A big “thank you” this week to the Tucson, Arizona, OCA members who convinced their local co-op, Food Conspiracy, to stop selling Ben & Jerry’s.

Several of our supporters emailed Food Conspiracy’s store manager and its board of directors. Within hours, the co-op posted this on Facebook:

Thanks to the Co-op owners who let us know their concerns about Ben & Jerry's Ice cream and glyphosate contamination. We have discontinued it from our frozen section.

We are excited about the possibility of an organic line of Ben & Jerry's in the future and are beyond humbled by the collective power of consumer voice speaking up and demanding it.

Food Conspiracy joins other co-ops who are listening to their owner/customers, including Moscow Food Co-Op in Moscow, Idaho; New Pioneer Food Co-Op in Coralville, Iowa; and Ypsilanti Food Co-Op and River Street Bakery in Ypsilanti, Michigan.

Could your co-op be next one to #DumpBenandJerry's?

And, if we all work together on the national front, maybe we can get National Co+op Grocers (NCG) to stop promoting Ben & Jerry’s. (More here on how you can help).

ACTION ALERT

Thumbs Down

"Ridiculous." "Terrible."

Those are just a couple of the adjectives Reps. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) and Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) used to describeTrump’s latest scheme to prop up industrial agriculture and Big Food, while delivering another hit to the health and wellbeing of America’s most vulnerable families.

Trump’s “America’s Harvest Box” plan would slash, by nearly half, the amount of money provided to families who are struggling to put food on their tables. Instead of being able to purchase locally grown fresh fruits and vegetables, families would receive a box of government-issued “shelf-stable” food products such as peanut butter, canned goods (including meat from factory farms), pasta, cereal, “shelf stable” milk and other products.

In other words, some of the highest-calorie, least nutritious food available, most of it produced with pesticides.

Trump claims the “Harvest Box” food would be “preselected for nutritional value and economic benefit to American farmers.”

But the only farmers who would benefit under the Trump’s proposal are the already heavily subsidized growers of industrial GMO crops—the kind grown with massive amounts of chemicals, and used to make highly processed foods that dish up plenty of calories with minimal nutritional value.

Trump’s “Harvest Box” scheme has been met with widespread scorn, including from the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC), which told Politico the idea is “a Rube-Goldberg designed system” that would be “costly, inefficient, stigmatizing and prone to failure.”

But that doesn’t mean the plan is dead on arrival. "America's Harvest Box" has the full support of Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue, who recently told the Los Angeles Times the plan should be “seriously considered and debated."

Given what we’ve seen come out of the Trump administration so far, we can’t count on saner heads to prevail. So we’re asking you to ask your members of Congress to give Trump’s “Harvest Box” plan a big thumbs down.

VIDEO OF THE WEEK

The Future of Chickens

How do we restore our land and our relationship with plants and animals, while supporting the economic health of farmers and their communities?

Chickens.

After nearly a decade of research and development, Northfield, Minnesota-based Main Street Project has perfected its regenerative poultry and grain project. All that’s left to do is deploy the model, and scale it up.

The Tysons and Perdues of the world would have you believe that their way—factory farms full of drugged-up, stressed-out chickens is the only way to meet market demand. But the founders of Main Street Project take a different view.

Main Street’s Chief Strategy Officer Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin (who is also on the steering committee of Regeneration International) describes that view:

“We are advocating for a farming approach that brings back ancient knowledge, wisdom and techniques that farmers have survived on for a long time. What we are doing is restructuring those techniques so we can meet current demands in a way that the farming system that we deploy is good for the people, good for the landscape and the ecology, and is good for the economy.”

It's part of the project’s “ecological, economic and social triple bottom line.” And, we believe, it’s the future of raising chickens.

READING CORNER

Let Them Eat Dirt!

Dr. Maya Shetreat-Klein’s son suffered a severe episode of asthma on his first birthday. Conventional treatments failed to reverse his condition and he hit a developmental plateau.

That personal experience led the pediatric neurologist down an investigative path that led her to the conclusion that food was to blame for her son’s illness.

The solution, she discovered, was simple: Heal the food, heal the gut, heal the brain . . . and heal the child.

In her book, “The Dirt Cure,” Shetreat-Klein argues for a dirt-filled chemical-free life. She shares success stories from her practice, and from her experience as a mother. She also provides tips for stocking up on healing foods, deciphering labels and getting even the pickiest of eaters to try a new menu.

Shetreat-Klein’s research and advice isn’t just for kids. Her book explains why so much food today contains arsenic and lead, the real reason milk is pasteurized, and why salmon is no longer the miracle fish.